Family feud as brother of serial killer breaks his silence

A bitter feud has broken out between the relatives of Australia's most notorious serial killer.

Ivan Milat is serving a life sentence after being jailed in 1996 for torturing and murdering seven backpackers and hiding their bodies in a forest south of Sydney. Three of his victims were German tourists, two were young British women and the remaining two were a couple from Melbourne.

All seven bodies were found buried in makeshift graves in the Belanglo state forest and had been stabbed, shot and mutilated. Some were beheaded.

One of Milat's brothers, Boris, has for the first time broken a family code of silence and described the mass murderer as a psychopath without a soul or a conscience.

He has received death threats from among his 10 other siblings, who have accused him of disloyalty and told him that they are 'polishing up the family hardware' in preparation for taking revenge.

His comments are the first time a member of the family has spoken out about Milat, whose crimes shocked Australia and received media coverage around the world.

'I feel [that] if my family got together and started washing that mud off, life would be better for them, their kids, and everyone around them,' Boris Milat told an ABC television documentary yesterday. '[Keeping their] heads in the sand, trying to deny the obvious, is just plain ridiculous.'